There is so much piano music out there to choose from, for this list I decided to pick a personal favourite, a beautiful duet written by Danny Elfman for Tim Burton’s ‘The Corpse Bride’. In an orchestral environment, pianos are mostly used as solo instruments, in concertos and other similar pieces. The piano is mainly used as an accompaniment to soloists, though there are many thousands of pieces written for solo piano. Well, what is there to say about the piano? Apart from maybe the guitar, it is probably the most well known instrument in the world. The saxophone has been popularised in recent years thanks to the character Lisa Simpson, whose ‘sax-a-ma-phone’ has brought the instrument to even more people. The saxophone has only appeared in orchestras relatively recently, only starting to appear in late romantic and early 20th century music.
It is best known as a jazz instrument, although it has surfaced in some pop songs, most notably in the famous solo in Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Baker Street’, which is the song in the video. It is a single reed instrument, similar to the clarinet. The saxophone, apart from maybe one other, is probably the most well known of all the instruments on this list. The video shows a euphoniums duet, playing a tune called ‘Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms’, which is based on a poem by Thomas Moore. It is very rare to see a baritone or euphonium in an orchestra, as they are usually found in big bands or marching bands. The euphonium is best known for being the ‘small tuba’ in a wind or marching band, though it’s range is a lot higher than a tuba. I‘ve lumped these two instruments together because a baritone is, to the casual observer, essentially a small euphonium. The video shows one of the most well known, and impressive pieces of solo organ music: J.S. Modern pipe organs are a lot more complicated than this, with multiple keyboards (including one played by the feet) and rows of stops. The organs back then would have looked a lot different than the ones we are used to seeing, with water power supplying the air pressure required to push air through the pipes. The pipe organ is one of the world’s oldest wind instruments, with examples found as far back as the 3rd century BC, in ancient Greece. Here are listed ten instruments you would not usually see in an orchestra. Not all composers, however, choose to limit themselves to these instruments, and add in extra instruments not usually seen in the standard orchestra. In each of these we have standard instruments, approximately four different instruments per section (not counting percussion). The standard orchestra that most of see these days consists of four sections: strings, woodwind, brass, and percussion.
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